Shard: View from the top

At 309m it's the tallest building in Europe (by tallest in Europe I mean western Europe, and by tallest I mean second-tallest after the 324m Eiffel Tower; though that's not technically a building because it's a structure, right? But if we were to include creations like Gustave Eiffel's, the Shard, which opened to the public last Friday, is only the 10th-tallest construction in the UK, let alone the continent - a full 55 metres shorter than that most celebrated of north-west landmarks, the Skelton Mast in Cumbria), and last night I decided to take the two kaleidoscopic lifts up to the Shard's Level 68. Despite the many and varied fingerprints, Brylcreem streaks and camera flashes, I managed to take the following slightly-too-grainy images thanks to a whopping great ISO setting. If you don't know what that means, move along; you're not wanted here.

Michael Lee Johnson's on foot to freedom: Walking from Beijing to London

Imagine clambering aboard an aeroplane in London bound for Beijing. In just ten-and-a-half hours, your jet-propelled metal cocoon will have carried you more than 5,000 miles en route to the Chinese capital. Now imagine bedding down for the night, awakening bright and early the next morning, lacing up the walking boots and strolling back home to the UK, alone and unaided, through some of the most volatile countries on the planet (Belgium in January; a nasty, nasty business, let me tell you), and minus the crow's advantage of travelling the most direct route. So, add another 4,000 miles onto the 5,000, slow down the average speed from 450 mph to four, and you're looking at a journey that will take three to five years to complete. Yes, the margin for error is as great as a hamster's life, a simile that achieves precisely the opposite effect I intended.

Snow in London: Slightly clichéd photographs

Occasionally, the mercury plummets to such depths that it becomes too cold to snow. Which is, of course, absolutely untrue - the people spouting such myths clearly haven't roamed the snowy wastelands of the Arctic or Antarctic. I digress. It 'felt' a positively polar minus 7 degrees C in London today, and the snow-clogged clouds dutifully deposited their fluffy white contents over the capital's streets as I was plodding around during my lunch hour. So naturally I joined in with everybody else struggling with their camera's exposure and white balance settings to take the following slightly clichéd photographs. Ka-boom:

The Emirates Air Line and a man named Clarence

"And of course, these are the same cranes lowered during Winston Churchill's funeral…

"…and look, quickly now, jees - I said quickly. Over there! North-east, north-east! - you can see the intricacy of the Lee Valley navigation system."

Viva Barca

The weekend before last saw thousands of Mancunians and Barcelones descend on London for the Champions League Final, and very exciting it was too if you like football, which approximately 75 per cent of my friends do not - friends who have social lives and see each other on Saturday evenings rather than sit down in front of the TV with a solitary tin of beer and a container overflowing with sweet and sour pork (Hong Kong style, obviously). 

So, thanks a bundle UEFA for scheduling the game when my presence was required at a dinner party, you mercenary, self-centred FIFA-esque bastards.

The trouble with Boris Bikes

A couple of weekends ago I was out in Shoreditch - the night had run its course, my body had been stuffed full of salmon and cream cheese bagels and it was time to go home. Autopilot kicked in and our little group tottered off to the bus stop. In a rather pleasant development, we noticed that none of us were shivering uncontrollably as our cerebrospinal fluid began to freeze solid. 

Let's put these bagels to use, we thought. Screw you number 35, we're getting Boris Bikes home! We felt like mavericks; drunken, bloated and slightly unstable, but mavericks nonetheless.

London iPod

This is a London iPod - yes, ha ha, a London Eye pod. Ha ha ha. A word of warning - don't call them 'pods' in earshot of the big wheel's staff. They get very offended because they're not pods at all, they're 'capsules'. I made this mistake and tried to laugh it off with an employee but she wasn't having any of it.

After finally forgiving me, she whispered a couple more London Eye-related facts. Did you know, for example, it can be sped up ever so slightly on busy days? And that staff at Merlin Entertainments, the company that manages the London Eye, refer to it as the 'cash cow'? A testament to the wheel's success, perhaps, but can't they knock down the prices a little bit?

Ghost Forest

Pop down to Trafalgar Square and you'll notice a number of rainforest tree stumps resting about the place.

These represent Angela Palmer's Ghost Forest, an art project designed to raise awareness of climate change.

Location, location, location

Last night I watched Location, Location, Location for the first time in about three years. The sexual tension between Kirsty and Phil seems to have escalated further - at one point Mr Spencer kicked Ms Alsop firmly but gently in the shin region, as if to release some of that pent-up frustration.

I could have done with the pair's help a few weeks ago. Having just moved to a flat in north London, which is pretty swish (relatively speaking) on the inside, I've been kept up the past few nights by Baring Street traffic - a road far busier than it was during our 20-minute viewing.

Open House London

Last weekend was Open House in London, meaning that hundreds of buildings across the capital swung their doors open to members of the public.

I found the two days incredibly confusing and frustrating - "No, sorry, the Gherkin isn't part of Open House, even though people said it was" and "No, you can't climb to the top of Tower 42 because you had to pre-book."

Sum, sum, summer summer murder

It is becoming normal to carry a knife if you're a young person. This is according to a report by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, which highlighted the "arms race" that exists between rival gangs in Britain.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than London, where 22 people under the age of 20 were stabbed to death last year. The latest fatality was 17-year-old Jahmal Mason-Blair, a promising footballer, who was stabbed in the neck in Hackney last month.

High rises for orange dogs

High rise tower blocks such as this were supposed to provide much-needed housing in overcrowded cities. Until now, the option of living in a high rise extended only to humans.

According to the BBC, 40-feet towers could be built above Leeds' canals to provide a habitat to the city's foxes, birds and bats.

Tamil protests in London

The Tamil protest at London's Parliament Square continues despite the Sri Lankan government announcing the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. 

As many as 5,000 people have gathered in an attempt to persuade the government to mediate the release of those detained in internment camps in the north of Sri Lanka.